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More "Powerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a game of her enemies and enjoyed her revenge in secret. But if she were a queen, then she was a queen-mother, and the king was not her husband but her little son. This would account for the perpetual intrigues against him, and the fact that he was so powerless to aid himself. Probably the enemy was too strong for him in the end, and he and his mother were taken into captivity together. It was in prison that she invented the royal game, the young king amused himself by carving out the ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... by modern writers, but neither all that has been said, nor what I have thought about it, when I was young and now that I am no longer so, nothing, in fact, can make me agree that love is a trifling vanity. It is a sort of madness, I grant that, but a madness over which philosophy is entirely powerless; it is a disease to which man is exposed at all times, no matter at what age, and which cannot be cured, if he is attacked by it in his old age. Love being sentiment which cannot be explained! God of all nature!—bitter and sweet feeling! ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the slave market, of so much more importance is the price of men. Your common school (a thing unknown, and held extremely dangerous in Carolina!) may be your much talked of guiding star to virtue; your early education is your bulwark against which the wave of vice is powerless; but unless you make it something more than a magnificent theory-unless you seek practical means, and go down into the haunts of vice, there to drag up the neglected child, to whom the word early education is a mystery, you leave untouched the festering volcano that ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... though she saw she was powerless to save the dog she loved. And her soul was sick within her at his peril which her ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the place to get the rioters out of the city, that they might at once be relieved of them, and then deal with them just as they might think fit. When the mob was once outside the walls, they might be refused re-admittance, and put down with a strong hand. The Roman garrison, who, powerless to quell the tumult in the narrow and winding streets and multiplied alleys of the city, had been the authors of the manoeuvre, now took on themselves the stern completion of it, and determined to do so in the sternest way. Not a single head of all those who poured out in the afternoon ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... productive power or of military strength. The only possible rivals to such a combination would be the widely scattered forces of the British Empire and the United States, separated from it by the stretches of the Atlantic Ocean. Against such a grouping Japan would be powerless because it would deprive her of the source of raw materials upon which she must rely for her economic development. Great Britain with her relatively small population and her rapidly diminishing resources could make no head against such a combination even ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... "consider what this means. We hold the state in our hands. If you are against us you are powerless. If you are with us we can promise you more power than you ever dreamed ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... planks still firm, my canvas swelling proudly. Hope is my goddess still, and Youth my inmate; And while we stand thus front to front almost I might presume to say that the swift years Have passed by powerless o'er ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the might of the world which threatens," she murmured. "Your country may defend herself, but here she is powerless. Already it has been proved. Last year you declared yourself our friend—you and even Russia. Of what avail was it? Word came from Berlin ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that he was forced to consent. He sat in that body from 1789 to 1791, and in those sessions which were marked by the brilliant contests between the Federalists and Republicans took a decided stand with the former, and sustained his position by an array of arguments against which his opponents were powerless. The struggle was one of great bitterness, but Marshall, although victorious in it, made ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... spouting capacities, he grasped the Indian's throat with his left. Quick as lightning Alizay, with his free hand, drew his scalping-knife and struck at the Eskimo's shoulder, but not less quick was Cheenbuk in releasing the throat and catching the Indian's wrist with a grip that rendered it powerless. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... bring fear to those who are in charge. It must be applied quickly, decisively, and preferably with impunity (such as stealth bombing with air superiority). The element of impunity, that is the other side is powerless to stop the damage, is a key element of this strategy. If on the other hand attacks are directed at the general public a backlash could be unleased because of the excessive and ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... Italy was now virtually ended, for, although during four years more Hannibal stood at bay in a corner of Bruttium, he was powerless to prevent the restoration of Roman authority throughout Italy. Nothing now remained to Carthage outside of Africa, except the ground on which Hannibal was ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... and am just waking into real existence? or am I developing into a medium,—Heaven forbid!—and the spirits pushing at some unguarded portal of the nervous system, and striving to take possession? Shall I hear raps and knockings when I return to my solitary chamber, and sit a powerless beholder of damaged furniture, which the spirits will never have the conscience to promise payment for, when my landlady's bill comes in? (By the way, have the spirits ever behaved like gentlemen in this respect, and settled up fair and square for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... I found that one stick would not leave my fingers. By great exertions, however, I at last threw it in, then I got another ready, but that tumbled down at my feet, and a third slipped from my fingers, and then my arm fell down powerless by my side. How long I slept I do not know. I dreamed over all the scenes I had witnessed since I came to the island, confusing and exaggerating them in the most extraordinary manner. I was galloping away on the backs of wild elephants, charging ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... is more than he can do, George. My word once pledged can only be redeemed by what it stood for, and he is powerless to ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... of the heart, That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say it in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Equally decadent is Liszt. Liszt is a Hungarian and the Hungarians are confessedly a completely disorganized, self-outlived, dying people. No less decadent is Chopin, whose figure comes before one as flesh without bones, this morbid, womanly, womanish, slip-slop, powerless, sickly, bleached, sweet-caramel Pole!" This has a ring of Nietzsche—Nietzsche who boasted ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... uneventful, mere, common; ordinary &c. (habitual) 613; inconsiderable, so-so, insignificant, inappreciable. trifling, trivial; slight, slender, light, flimsy, frothy, idle; puerile &c. (foolish) 499; airy, shallow; weak &c. 160; powerless &c. 158; frivolous, petty, niggling; piddling, peddling; fribble[obs3], inane, ridiculous, farcical; finical, finikin[obs3]; fiddle-faddle, fingle- fangle[obs3], namby-pamby, wishy-washy, milk and water. poor, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Modern science? The word grated on her ears. It savored to her of narrow medical tyranny, and distrust of aspiring individuality. Wilbur was dying, and all modern science saw fit to do was to give him brandy and wait. And she, his wife—the one who loved him best in the world, was powerless to intervene. Nay, she had intervened, and modern science had ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... violence. He informed them that armed guards of the League were, at that moment, patrolling Los Muertos, Broderson's, and Osterman's. It was well known that the United States marshal confessed himself powerless to serve the writs. There would ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... Seth was powerless against such odds. There was no hope. His revolver cracked and more than one man fell, but they closed with him, and, as his last barrel was emptied, he felt the flesh of his left shoulder rip under the slashing blow of an axe. His horse reared ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... wondering, with her so young, and a hundred dollars pledged, and all so eager to work under her—for she was one of them that's born to lead—who should run in but Henry Wilson, all out of breath, crying to her to hurry home, for Madam was down with a stroke, and one side of her all powerless! ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... just as Kedsty was recovering sufficiently from the shock of the blow to fight, Marette's companion had killed him. Horrified, dazed by what had already happened, perhaps unconscious, she had been powerless to prevent the use of a tress of her hair in the murderer's final work. Kent, in this picture, eliminated the boot-laces and the curtain cords. He knew that the unusual and the least expected happened frequently in crime. And Marette's long hair was flowing loose about her. To use ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... them he can do nothing for them in a large way, but—the fee he has received to cure them can afford as much—graciously throwing them fifty pounds from his private compassion! As a statesman he is powerless; but he has no objection to subscribe to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... Theirs, too, joy's harbinger, the thoughts aye fed With brighter objects than of earth, that shed A light within their narrow home, and gave A triumph's lustre to the yawning grave. And in that hour when the proud heart's o'erthrown, And self all-powerless, self is truly known; When pride no more could darken the free mind, But all to God in firm faith was resign'd— Then drank their souls the stream of love divine, More richly flowing than the Eastern mine; Felt heaven expanding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... was powerless and dependent on the kindness of strangers. Her speech in that moment of terror might have expressed more than she felt. Should I presume upon it? Should I take advantage of her distress to impose my love upon ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled broken and powerless; his rifle ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... was effected by religion. Religion alone could have rendered possible all that was accomplished, but it was far from being the SOLE motive of the war. Had not private advantages and state interests been closely connected with it, vain and powerless would have been the arguments of theologians; and the cry of the people would never have met with princes so willing to espouse their cause, nor the new doctrines have found such numerous, brave, and ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... Hadendowa tribe, was in prison during our stay in that country, for some breach of discipline in his dealings with the Egyptian Government. The iron hand of despotism has produced a marvellous change among the Arabs, who are rendered utterly powerless by the system of government adopted by the Egyptians; unfortunately, this harsh system has the effect of ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... suddenly thrust out of sight—an abomination that the earth must not look upon—a despicable loathsomeness, to be concealed and to be forgotten! And this same composition of bone and muscle that was yesterday so strong—which men respected, and women loved, and children clung to—to-day so lamentably powerless, unable to defend or protect those who lay nearest to its heart; its riches wrested from it, its wishes spat upon, its influence expiring with its last sigh! A breath from its lips making all that mighty difference between what it was ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... They were also powerless to do anything to show their love, or to honor the body of their Friend. They were poor and unknown men, without influence. None of them had a grave in which the body could be laid. Nor had they power ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... up in the air and whirled about like the foam of the roaring sea; but our wanderers did not feel its effects much, for they had chosen a very sheltered spot at the foot of a large pine, which grew in a hollow, where a cliff on one side and a bluff of wood on the other rendered the blast powerless. Its fierce howling could be heard, however, if not felt; and as the brother and sister lay at the bottom of their hole in the snow, with their toes to the comfortable fire, they chatted much more cheerily than might have been expected in the midst of such a scene, and gazed ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... Legitimists have no chance, he desires to keep well with the nobles of that party, because they exercise a considerable influence over that sphere of opinion which belongs to fashion,—for fashion is never powerless in Paris. Raoul and myself are no mean authorities in salons and clubs, and a good word ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his muscles. His head ached, his whole being cried for water. He knew he could not carry her far, but without her he was powerless. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... to be the death of any one. A thick, dark, yellow fog overhangs the sky, so that one can hardly see in the house without candles. The sun stands powerless, like a ruddy point, in the clouds. No: there is no living in this climate. The longing I feel for Hosterwitz, and the clear air, is indescribable. But patience,—patience,—one day rolls on after another; two months are already over. I have formed an acquaintance with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... not pantheistic or materialist, but solely as spiritual powers who needed to obtain information, and who only could act through intermediaries. Further, nothing can be done without the consent of Ra; Thoth is powerless over men, and can only ask Ra, as a sort of universal magistrate, to take notice of the offence. Neither god acts directly, but by means of a power or angel, who takes the commission to work on men. How far this police-court conception of the ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... power to repel the attacks of every living thing, the intrepid Maha was permitted to advance within a few steps of Karkapaha. He had just raised his spear to strike the unmanly lover, when, all at once, he found himself riveted to the ground. His feet refused to move, his hands hung powerless at his side, his tongue refused to utter a word. The bow and arrow fell from his hand, and his spear lay powerless. A little child, not so high as the fourth leaf of the thistle, came and spat on him, and a company of the spirits danced around him singing ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... July sky, the blaze of flowers in the rectory garden, and the subtle, penetrating fragrance of mignonette. Perhaps the contrast of the intense cold and the gathering night brought the scene before her; she sighed; if she and John could go away from this grief and misery and sin, which they seemed powerless to relieve, and from this ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... of the Vesuvian communes are once more settling down in their ruined homes, or their damaged farms and gardens. No doubt a new Bosco-Trecase will arise on the shapeless ruins of the old site, for fear of danger seems powerless to deter the outcast population from reoccupying its old haunts. Ottajano will be rebuilt, not for the first time, and its citizens will again trust to luck—and to St Januarius—for protection from the evil fate which has repeatedly overtaken their town. The ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... seemed to have a charmed life, for although eight bullets pierced his clothes, one cutting away a lock of the thick gray hair that flowed from under his three-cornered hat, he escaped without a wound. Finally defeat became a rout which St. Clair was powerless to check. Pushed aside in the rush of fugitives, he was left in a position of great peril. If the Indian pursuit had been persistent, few might have escaped, but the Indians stopped to plunder the camp. Nevertheless six hundred ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... the sad experience of centuries that nominal Christianity, which men call religion, is utterly powerless to stop warfare; it may, in a few instances, have lessened some of its horrors, but only a few. The annals of the wars which have taken place for the last three hundred years since the world has improved in civilisation, show that nations rush into war as eagerly as ever, and that cruelties ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... child like this, How is it that he knows What years of close analysis Are powerless ...
— More Beasts (For Worse Children) • Hilaire Belloc
... can see them. But those who look more interiorly into the causes of things take a different view. Such know that all the power that a man has is from his understanding and will (for apart from these he is powerless to move a particle of his body), and his understanding and will are his spiritual man. This moves the body and its members at its pleasure; for whatever it thinks the mouth and tongue speak, and whatever it wills the body does; and it bestows its strength at pleasure. As ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... for our joy they live, and for our grief They die not. Though thine eye be closed, thine hand Powerless as mine to paint them, not a leaf In English woods or ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... soul derived a power which was a dominion over the whole earth. I understood the meaning of those words in the Canticle: "Let my Beloved come into His garden and eat." [11] He showed me also the condition of a soul in sin, utterly powerless, like a person tied and bound and blindfold, who, though anxious to see, yet cannot, being unable to walk or to hear, and in grievous obscurity. I was so exceedingly sorry for such souls, that, to deliver only one, any trouble seemed to me light. I thought it impossible ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... Monaghan, was hanged; and some hundreds of the inhabitants of Armagh, who had surrendered on promise of their lives, were massacred in cold blood. As for the more irregular murders committed in the open field upon helpless, terrified creatures, powerless to defend themselves, they are too numerous to relate, and there is happily no purpose to be gained in repeating the harrowing details. The effect produced by the condition of the survivors upon those ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... herd, too, fed where it chose and had moved out of the meadows toward the farm. The little girl was powerless to turn it, and when she set the pack at the cattle they only ran faster than ever toward the fields. So she called the dogs off. Slowly, but surely, the cows led the forbidden way, and as the little girl moved about on the pinto, powerless to go where ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... He who controlled legislatures and dictated to Supreme Court judges had found himself powerless when each turn of the legal machinery had brought him face to face with Judge Rossmore. Suit after suit had been decided against him and the interests he represented, and each time it was Judge Rossmore who had handed down the decision. So for years these two men had fought a silent ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... he still continued to struggle vigorously against the force of the current. At this juncture, some passing clouds obscured the moon, and I lost sight of a group of trees which, before leaving the opposite bank, I fixed my eye upon as a guiding beacon. Quite powerless, my horse and I were carried away by the stream, and driven against a rock in the middle of the river. I now heard the anxious outcries of my negro and the travellers on the bank, whilst the waves rose over my head. With a convulsive effort I pulled the bridle, and the horse then turning ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... his stalwart appearance, the Capricorn is powerless to leave the tree-trunk by his unaided efforts. It therefore falls to the worm, to the wisdom of that bit of an intestine, to prepare the way for him. We see renewed, in another form, the feats of prowess of the Anthrax, whose pupa, armed with trepans, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... I must make the best of it. I realize I am powerless." She realized it fully in that moment; realized that her son was a man, a man with force and a will, and that it would be hopeless to try to bring him to submit to her influence. "There is nothing for us to discuss. I shall ask ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... in the ambitious and loving household which hoped all things from him. His mistakes and faults they pardoned; thinking, poor souls, that the strong passions which led him astray betokened a strong character and not a powerless will. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the extreme, for their means of transportation was in the hands of the six coal-carrying railroads, who could raise rates almost at will and find reasons even for refusing service. The states were powerless to remedy the situation because their authority did not extend to interstate commerce, yet it was intolerable for a small group of interested parties to have power to fix the output of so necessary a commodity as coal, on no other basis than that ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Demosthenes? Here I have the jutting brow, and the excellent shape of the head. And here the organism of the eye full of England, the valid eye, in which I see the strong executive talent which has made his thought available to the nations, whilst others as intellectual as he are pale and powerless. The photograph comes dated 25 April, 1846, and he writes, 'I am fifty years ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... he went on, "I can assure you that its ownership will never be known. When the nearest patrolman rushed up, there were no survivors of the disaster, save those in the third car which he was powerless to stop—which accounts for your presence here. You will admit that I have ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... with. Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... it in her heart or mind or soul that went out to this man? Music—was that it? Was he powerless to stir her without the gift? But hadn't he fascinated her by his talk, gentle and winning? Ah, but that had been after he had ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Montgomery had neither men nor artillery to storm the fortified city which he had hoped to surprise and easily occupy with the aid of secret friends within its walls. Carleton, however, rallied all loyal men to his support, and the traitors on whom the invaders had relied were powerless to carry out any treacherous design they may have formed. The American commanders at once recognised the folly of a regular investment of the fortress during a long and severe winter, and decided to attempt to surprise ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... in a recent number of the Century passes the topic with this awe-stricken remark: "This problem (of the Negro) cannot be touched practically; ancient wrongs bind the nation hand and foot, and its outcome must be awaited as we await the gathering of the tempest—powerless to avert, and trembling over the steady approach" (The italics are ours.) This is not wise; it is not manly. Why try to avert the evils of immigration, or any other, if we are meanwhile only to await tremblingly the doom that is to come on us from ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... rolled from side to side, appealing in vain for help. Some of the crowd yelled and cheered, others seemed appalled at what they had done, and there were those who turned away sickened at the sight. I was fixed to the spot where I stood, powerless to take my eyes from what I did not want ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... Judea, according to Isa. 27:6, "When they shall rush out from Jacob [*Vulg.: 'When they shall rush in unto Jacob,' etc.] . . . they shall fill the face of the world with seed." Moreover those who were being sent were poor and powerless; nor at the outset could they have easily found someone to interpret their words faithfully to others, or to explain what others said to them, especially as they were sent to unbelievers. Consequently it was necessary, in this respect, that God should provide them with the gift ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... attempt to attain the history of the ant. Among the factory workers, the waist makers' admirable efforts for juster wages were, as far as yearly income was concerned, largely ineffectual, on account of this obstacle of slack and dull seasons, whose occurrence employers are as powerless ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... under their control, not in order to curtail their freedom of action, but in order to attach them to my cause:[371] that as things stand now, supposing the consuls to choose to take part against me, they can do so without let or hindrance, but if they wish to do anything in my favour they are powerless if the tribunes object. For as to what you say in your letter, that, if your party had not consented, they would have obtained their object by a popular vote—that would have been impossible against ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... one at a time, they found themselves pinioned, and, staring round them in dismay, saw their fellow-mutineers in irons, guarded by the loyal members of the crew. At Da Gama's order all were marshalled on deck, and stood, sullen and powerless, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... to perceive thus those two lovers, whom she had wished to strike, with the ecstacy of bliss in their eyes! Lydia would have liked to tear out their eyes, his as well as hers, and to trample them beneath her heel. A fresh flood of hatred filled her heart. God! how she hated them, and with what a powerless hatred! But her time would come; another need pressed sorely—to prevent the meeting of the following day, to save her brother. To whom should she turn, however? To Dorsenne? To Montfanon? To Baron Hafner? To Peppino Ardea? She thought by turns of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... almost shed tears over it; it takes away my happiness and my rest; my constancy finds itself powerless against such a misfortune; my mind is for ever dwelling over it, and the ill success of our charms and the triumph of Psyche are ever before my eyes. At night, unceasingly, comes to me the remembrance of it, and nothing can banish the cruel picture. As soon as sweet slumber comes ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... and his tone implied reference to some anterior conversation, 'We are powerless in this matter. You see we can do nothing. We only succeed in making ourselves unhappy; we do not change in ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... 123 Members, sat as Peers in the Upper House. Cash, places, and peerages, were the usual considerations paid for maintaining a Government majority. The Catholics, from three-quarters to five-sixths of the population, had neither votes nor members; the Dissenters scarcely any members and an almost powerless vote. The Irish Legislature, by an Act as old as 1495, the famous Poynings' Law, could neither initiate nor pass a measure without the consent of the English Privy Council, and the Declaratory Act of 1719 confirmed ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... challenged him, in sport, to wrestle. Washington did not stop to take off his coat, but grasped the "strong man of Virginia." {65} It was all over in a moment, for, said the wrestler, "in Washington's lionlike grasp, I became powerless, and was hurled to the ground with a force that seemed to jar the very ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... house was filled to overflowing with kind and sympathetic neighbors who had come to do all that had to be done. David sat on the back doorstep until M'ri came; before the expression in his eyes she felt powerless to comfort him. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... taken prisoner than every province of the Roman empire, feeling the sword powerless in the weak hands of Gallienus, declared its own general emperor; and when Macrianus, who had been left in command in Syria, gathered together the scattered forces of the Eastern army, and made himself ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... are never allowed to grow as God designed, as the flower expands into beauty from the bud. Chinese women realise that it is foolish, that it is a deformity, but it is the "custom," and custom prevails. It is like the laws of the Medes and Persians which alter not. Women are powerless under it. It is in vain to a large extent that they oppose it. There is in China an Anti-foot-binding League, which receives the support of men of prominence. Even centuries ago imperial edicts were issued against it, but ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... Alabama failed to provide any funds for an exhibit of the resources of that State. A commission which had been appointed by the governor to attend to the business for the State was powerless to act and gave up the undertaking. In consequence of this failure the Commercial Club of Birmingham decided, when it was almost too late to arrange for any kind of an exhibit, to make a display of the State's mineral ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... counter, though gradually moving back to the further edge of it. I saw the crisis was at hand, for smothered but angry argument was going on in knots of men all over the room; my life was suspended upon a breath, and I was utterly powerless to change the decision, whatever it might be; but I must say that my nerves were steady and my hand untrembling,—the unwonted calmness of one who knew that death was inevitable if they should decide in the affirmative on the charge, and who was determined to defend himself to ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... of passion's wandering wing, How swift the step of reason's firmer tread, How calm and sweet the victories of life. How terrorless the triumph of the grave! How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm, Vain his loud threat and impotent his frown! How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar! The weight of his exterminating curse, How light! and his affected charity, To suit the pressure of the changing times, What palpable deceit!—but ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... manner of a bull-fighter, suddenly caught his foot on a root and fell headlong. A shout went up as the others realized that he was doomed to almost certain death. Billy and Lathrop averted their eyes. It was terrible to have to sit there powerless and watch the sacrifice. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... tendencies of Abolitionism, as thus far developed. The South are now in just that state of high exasperation, at the sense of wanton injury and impertinent interference, which makes the influence of truth and reason most useless and powerless. ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... far vainer than we are. Their indifference to the little arts we practise shows it. A woman whose head is bald covers it with a wig. Without a wig she would feel that she was an outcast totally powerless to attract. But a bald-headed man has no idea of diffidence. He does not bother about a wig because he expects to be ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... shall find, A waste of waters, wild and drear, That chills each living heart with fear. There see the horse's awful head, Wrath-born, that flames in Ocean's bed.(681) There rises up a fearful cry From the sea things that move thereby, When, helpless, powerless for flight, They gaze upon the horrid sight. Past to the northern shore, and then Beyond the flood three leagues and ten Your wondering glances will behold Mount Jatarupa(682) bright with gold. There like the young moon pale ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... alliances, intended to group together scattered forces, sprang fresh passions or interests, which became so many fresh causes of discord and hostility. And, in these divers-agglomerations, government was everywhere almost equally irregular and powerless to maintain order or found an enduring state. Kymrians, Gauls, or Iberians were nearly equally ignorant, improvident, slaves to the shiftings of their ideas and the sway of their passions, fond ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... she tied his arms behind him, so that he was powerless to do her any mischief. She then cut off a portion of the clothes line, which hung up in the kitchen, and tied his feet together. In this condition, he was secured to a door. The boy looked cool and savage; he did not cry, and ceased to struggle only ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... economic era. If you had to constitute new societies, Peel said to Croker, then you might on moral and social grounds prefer cornfields to cotton factories, and you might like an agricultural population better than a manufacturing; as it was, the national lot was cast, and statesmen were powerless to turn back the tide. The food of the people, their clothing, the raw material for their industry, their education, the conditions under which women and children were suffered to toil, markets for the products of loom and forge and furnace and mechanic's shop,—these were slowly making ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... arm in the shoulder was shattered; but, fortunately, the main artery of the arm escaped injury. Notwithstanding his wound Kit immediately endeavored to reload his rifle. In this effort he was unsuccessful, for his left arm hung powerless by his side. He was obliged, therefore, to remain a mere spectator during the remainder of the fight; when, being overcome by the loss of blood and the consequent fast increasing weakness, he threw himself upon the ground. The fight continued to be hotly contested by both ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... tyrannies. It is not humanity that disgusts us in the huge cities; it is inhumanity. It is not that there are human beings; but that they are not treated as such. We do not, I hope, dislike men and women; we only dislike their being made into a sort of jam: crushed together so that they are not merely powerless but shapeless. It is not the presence of people that makes London appalling. It is merely the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... (grain or offspring), Syria (Kharu) has become widows (Kharut) of or to Egypt." We can form no conclusion from these statements as to the relation in which the Israelites stood to Pharaoh and to Egypt, except that they are represented as having been powerless. It is pretty clear, however, from the context that they were then in Palestine, or at least in Syria. Steindorff suggests that they may have entered Syria from Chaldaea during the disturbed times in Egypt at the end of the eighteenth ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... part her from a miserable corset, although you see in her poor wasted face that it is carrying her to the churchyard. In that case, sir, there is but one thing for you to do,—withdraw your opposition and let me marry her. As her lover I am powerless; but invest me with a husband's authority, and you will soon see the roses return to her cheek, and her elastic figure expanding, and her eye beaming with health and the happiness that comes ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... the conclusion that he was, as Geoffrey had said, powerless to interfere. If Mr. Francis Vere decided to take the boys with him, what could he do to prevent it? He could hardly take them forcibly down to the boat against their will, and even could he do so their father might not approve, and doubtless the earl, when he ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... may treat you as an unwelcome intruder, proceed calmly to the statement of your business. You know that your intention to render him a true service justifies you in taking his time. Therefore his assumed fierce manner should be powerless ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... than practical. It found that though, in a general way, the United States possessed national powers, as over boundaries, peace and war, the issue of money, the establishment of post-offices, etc., yet in the very necessary matter of revenue, and the regulation of trade and commerce, it was powerless against the States. The old form of the confederation was found insufficient to secure the full independence of the United States as a Nation, and in the very year that the articles were fully adopted, and before the last State had given its adherence (1781), a member of Congress from New Jersey ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... living Jesus was with the first Church she was all right. His life was the source of her life; His authority and power meant her existence and unity. But when the Shepherd was smitten the sheep were scattered. When the followers of Christ saw Him powerless and dead they denied Him and fell back to their natural instinct of self-defence, and the first Church died with the death of Christ. It was like the green corn in the field smitten by a flail to the very root. The owner of the corn walks in the field ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... crooked folks as dangerous at poker, only you've got to watch 'em. So long as your eye is on 'em a heap attentive they're powerless to perform their partic'lar miracle, an' as a result, since that's the one end an' aim of their efforts, they becomes mighty inocuous. As a roole, crooked people ain't good players on the squar', an' as long as you makes 'em ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... gasped for breath, she interpreted it as a symptom of speechless delight, and flew to the oven and dashed a bucket of cold water on the red-hot stones placed there for the purpose. The steam poured forth in intolerable clouds; but we submitted, powerless to protest. Alexandra, with all her clothes on, seemed not to feel the heat. She administered a merciless yet gentle massage to every limb with her birch rods,—what would it have been like if she had used ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... should never forget how nearly Ireland was lost to this country during the American war; that it was saved merely by the jealousy of the Protestant Irish towards the Catholics, then a much more insignificant and powerless body than they now are. The Catholic and the Dissenter have since combined together against you. Last war, the winds, those ancient and unsubsidised allies of England; the winds, upon which English ministers depend as much for saving kingdoms as washerwomen do ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... this; and in that one glance the terrified creature became utterly powerless and unable to utter ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... now was Bennett's defeat! The very contingency he had fought so desperately to avert and for which he had sacrificed Ferriss—Lloyd's care of so perilous a disease—behold! the mysterious turn of the wheel had brought it about, and now he was powerless to resist. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... javelins, and every other weapon which could be projected from a distance, were equally ineffectual, and no one could come near enough to men thus protected to strike at them with the sword. Even cavalry were utterly powerless in attacking such chevaux de frise as the phalanx presented. No charge, however furious, could break its serrated ranks; an onset upon it could only end in impaling the men and the horses that made it together on the points ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... advice, energy, activity, money, credit, all his resources whatsoever, were all made useless. If she had been possessed of the old fabled influence, and had turned those who looked upon her into stone, she could not have rendered him more completely powerless (so it seemed to him in his distress of mind) than she did, when she turned her unyielding face to his in her ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... heart to stone! We cannot afford space to detail the various shades of agony, the degrees of despair, through which this unfortunate young man passed during that evening. A thick volume would not suffice to contain it all. Language is powerless to express it. Only those who have similarly suffered ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... disappointed. How fearfully quiet was everything! I would have given worlds, had I possessed them, if I could have seen a familiar face. I even had a half-formed thought to scream loudly for help, but I could not do it. My will was utterly powerless. We approached the house where Ackermann resided, and I was seized with horror, thinking it possible that she might murder him while I witnessed the bloody deed, powerless to prevent it. But she never once looked ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bluish, cottony, suffocating fog. She took me far, and many marvelous things happened on our way. We met terrible giant dogs. My proud bearing seemed to exasperate them, but I kept them back with a single look (besides, a closed iron gate rendered them powerless). I chased a rabbit into the thicket, though She cried loudly: "I forbid you to touch the little animal!" ... My mother certainly gave me swift legs but they're short, and the white end of the little beast kept far ahead. A bush covered with red berries detained us a very long time. She sees no ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... raised from the mire, and peers, over whose heads they were placed, were joined in a common fate. Wolsey and More, Cromwell and Norfolk, trod the same dizzy path to the same fatal end; and the English people looked on powerless or unmoved. They sent their burgesses and knights of the shire to Westminster without let or hindrance, and Parliament met with a regularity that grew with the rigour of Henry's rule; but it seemed to assemble only to register the royal edicts and clothe ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... understood it was all a put-up affair intended to make our opponents believe that for a time I was powerless to hurt them. What do you think ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... the animal by the long hair on his forehead, as it struck him on the side with its horn, and being a remarkably tall and powerful man, a struggle ensued, which continued until his wrist was severely sprained, and his arm was rendered powerless; he then fell, and after receiving two or three ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... cradle. And yet it perpetually new creates the world, rescuing it each morning as a prey from night and chaos. So the Christian is a light, even "the light of the world;" and we must not think that, because he shines insensibly or silently, as a mere luminous object, he is therefore powerless. The greatest powers are ever those which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature: and I verily believe that the insensible influences of good men are as much more potent than what I have called their voluntary or active, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... beauty and her strength influenced him as tonight. While she was singing he saw and heard no one else. The tent swarmed with a confused crowd of faces and he knew he was sitting there hemmed in by a mob of people, but they had no meaning to him. He felt powerless to avoid speaking to her. He knew he should speak when ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... Blair to understand the nervous fear of drowning which had taken possession of poor Hal. Fairport boys could swim almost as soon as they could walk. They knew nothing of the helpless feeling of one who has the great deep under him, and is powerless ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Italians, together with the Walloons and other obedient Netherlanders in Hainault, who obliged the city of Mons to collect nine hundred florins a day for them. The consequence of these military rebellions was to render the Spanish crown almost powerless during the whole year, within the provinces nominally subject to its sway. The cause—as always—was the non-payment of these veterans' wages, year after year. It was impossible for Philip, with all the wealth of the Indies and Mexico pouring ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in Long v. The Bishop of Cape Town, that "the Church of England, in places where there is no church established by law, is in the same situation with any other religious body." In 1865 it adjudged Bishop Gray's letters patent, as metropolitan of Cape Town, to be powerless to enable him "to exercise any coercive jurisdiction, or hold any court or tribunal for that purpose," since the Cape colony already possessed legislative institutions when they were issued; and his deposition of Bishop Colenso was declared to be "null and void in law" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... the table and stared at the bulkhead in front of him. He clenched his fists. Needless to say, he agreed with Roger, he had the same feelings. But he was powerless to ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... Ribauds devastated the neighbourhood and the Sieur des Eyzies on the opposite side of the river, and who was on the French side, was powerless against them. In company with the garrison of Bigaroque they surprised Temniac near Sarlat, S. Quentin and Campagnac, in 1348, but were shortly after dislodged by the Seneschal of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... of the gods, he brought low the glory of the powerless Swedes, doing their king to death and crushing ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... throat, his chin was sunk deep into the German's shoulder. Von Arnheim had only one arm free, the other was pinioned to his side. With this free arm he plucked futilely at Roy's arm across his throat, unable to reach the guarded face. It was a grip Von Arnheim was powerless to break, and it was only a question of time until he would be throttled ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... referred for its source to the teachings of Louis Blanc, who formed in 1840 a workmen's society in Paris. Blanc held, as the Social Democrats hold, that capitalism was the cause of all social evil, and that the workman was powerless against it. He therefore proposed the establishment of workmen's societies for purposes of production, and the grant of the necessary capital at a low rate of interest by the State. The doctrine was ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... simply a complete admission that the priest, although entirely convinced that his parishioners were making most unfair demands upon their landlord to whom the letter was addressed, felt himself entirely powerless to bring them to a sense of their misconduct." "Had this priest given in his adhesion to the Plan of Campaign?" I asked. "Yes," was the reply, "and it was this fact which had broken his hold on the people when ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... treatise as Seneca's DE CONSTANTIA SAPIENTIS, which is a monody on the theme with which it closes: esse aliquem invictum, esse aliquem in quem nihil fortuna possit—"to be something unconquered, something against which fortune is powerless." In the fifth section the idea is worded in a fashion that could have suggested Shakspere's utterance of it; and he might easily have met with some citation of the kind. But, on the other hand, this note of passionate friendship is not only new in Shakspere ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Pierre had given no heed to these weighty problems. Powerless to enforce counsels of his own experienced craft, Pierre now and then lapsed into ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... with such unbounded means, having command of all the roads which lead to Cracow, having the power of marching their troops at any moment into the city of Cracow, having certain rights which were constituted and assigned to them in the Treaty of Vienna—should have found themselves so powerless as to be unable to prevent Cracow becoming dangerous to their peace and welfare. I cannot, indeed, but suspect, especially looking at the latter part of this transaction, when government was dissolved ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... timid maid, here stands the man from whom Thou fearest a repulse; supremely blessed To call thee all his own. Well might he doubt His title to thy love; but how couldst thou Believe thy beauty powerless to subdue him? ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... heart now. He is not in the least daunted by his adversaries. He can look them squarely in the eyes without shrinking. His heart is full of confidence. He knows whom he is trusting. Throughout the long day while the priests of Baal are calling so earnestly upon their powerless god, the prophet is the calmest man of all the many witnesses. He is looking on God's side now, and he is conscious master of the whole situation. He even grows ironical ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... guilty, but I don't believe he'd be convicted— though I must say it would have been a most devilish good thing for him if he could have been got out of France before la Mursiana heard the truth. Then he could have made terms with her safely at a distance— she'd have been powerless to injure him and would have precious soon come to time and been glad to take whatever he'd give her. NOW, I suppose, that's impossible, and they'll arrest him if he tries to budge. But this talk of prison and all that ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... upon her prey than on a stone image. No; although she hung over him, tapped him with too eloquent fingers, whispered jokes in his ear, and filled his nostrils with an exquisite and voluptuous perfume, she was powerless! ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... moment I saw one of the buccaneers with his musket uplifted, preparing to bring it down with crushing force upon me, and caught sight of Vetch behind him sword in hand. I thought my end was come, for I had not yet secured my footing, and was powerless to protect myself. But suddenly there was a deafening report from the room beyond; the buccaneer pitched forward on to the rail, his musket falling from his hand. My life was saved by the man's body lurching against me, for being between Vetch and me, he prevented ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... those who have escaped that death-in-life existence, from which Laura Bridgman was rescued, can realize how isolated, how shrouded in darkness, how cramped by its own impotence is a soul without thought or faith or hope. Words are powerless to describe the desolation of that prison-house, or the joy of the soul that is delivered out of its captivity. When we compare the needs and helplessness of the blind before Dr. Howe began his work, with their present usefulness and independence, we realize ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the wooden bench, looking white and powerless as a dying man; the miller's wife brought out a bowl of milk and made him drink, but he begged the miller to help him back to his bed, and asked to be forgiven for bringing a dying man into their house. He thought his last hour had come. With the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... to have no effect on the monster that had caught Tubby's bait, however. With the exception that the speed was diminished a trifle, the Flying Fish was still powerless to shake off ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... now reached the limits of our present study, and have only to state that all gems, like the human organism, are in one of three conditions: alive and conscious, asleep and UNCONSCIOUS, or dead and powerless. These conditions can only be discovered, in stones, by the trained lucid or the instructed neophyte. Stones that are sleeping require to be awakened. This, also, can only be done by the trained student or Adept. Those that are dead, are USELESS as Talismans, no matter how beautiful ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Lausanne, announcing that the First Consul had accepted the office of Mediator of the Helvetic League. A French army entered Switzerland. Fifty-six deputies from the cantons were summoned to Paris; and, in the beginning of 1803, a new Constitution, which left the central Government powerless in the hands of France and reduced the national sovereignty to cantonal self-administration, placed Switzerland on a level with the Batavian and the Cisalpine dependencies of Bonaparte. The Rhone Valley, with the mountains crossed by the new road over the Simplon, was converted into a separate ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Italy. There was not a port which an English ship could enter. Everywhere on the land the genius of her great enemy had triumphed. He had defeated armies, crushed coalitions, and overturned thrones; but, like the fabled giant, he was unconquerable only while he touched the land. On the ocean he was powerless. That field of fame was his adversary's, and her meteor flag was streaming in triumph ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of a mile he followed Le Beau's tracks. He sensed the presence of a new and thrilling danger, and yet he did not turn off the trail. An impulse which he was powerless to resist drew him on. He came to a second trap, and this time he robbed the bait-peg without springing the thing which he knew was concealed close under it. His long fangs clicked as he went on. He was eager for a glimpse of the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... his dealings with the President, and kept up an underhand correspondence with the radical leaders, even assisting in framing some of the reconstruction legislation which was designed to render Johnson powerless. In him the radicals had a ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... and seemed to reflect. "Who is there more vile, more traitorous than he?" he went on. "Has he not tried to influence Errington's wife against her husband? For what base purpose? But Clara,—he is powerless against her purity and innocence;—what, in the name of God, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the habit of bearing about in her pocket. All this would become unendurable to her father when his first infatuation was past. For his own sake, then, as well as for her mother's memory, this match must be prevented. And yet how powerless she was to prevent it! What could she do? Could Harold aid her? Perhaps. Or Ida? At least she would tell her sister and see ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... terribly vexed by this rudeness, which I was powerless to resist, and regretted my indiscretion in entering the forecastle after the politic resolutions I had formed. However, Captain Coxon's ferocity was nothing new to me; truly I believed he was not quite right in his mind, and expected, as in former cases, that ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... to bay by Leopold's insistence, the manager declared that he would produce the opera if the father desired it, but that it should not benefit the Mozarts, as he would take care that it should be hissed off the stage. The Emperor was powerless to interfere, as Affligio held the theatre independently of the Court, and nothing remained to be done but ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... healthy as his natural constitution was he had worn it out with the severity of his toil. He denied himself refreshment in his eagerness for study, and sat over his books in the bitterest days of winter till hands and feet were powerless with the cold. At last nature abruptly gave way, his last hopes of recovery were foiled by an immoderate return to his old pursuits, and at the age of thirty-one Henry Wharton died a quiet scholar's death. Archbishop Tenison ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... external forms for ritual and ceremonial. The two movements thus seem to be in absolutely opposite directions, but they have nevertheless terminated at the same point. In other words, the Raskol, when once freed from the authority which maintained the unity of the faith, was as powerless as Protestantism to establish any authority within itself. It has in consequence become a prey to the same license of opinion, to the same individualism, and, finally, to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... whose gift are places, peerages, gold-sticks, and ribbons, has nothing at his command for the bruised spirit of the half-pay soldier. Before that poverty, that grief, and that pride, the King's Counsellor was powerless. Only when Trevanion rose to depart, something like a sense of the soothing intention which the visit implied seemed to rouse the repose of the old man and to break the ice at its surface; for he followed Trevanion to the door, took both his hands, pressed ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those who desired them; even their children were kidnapped, doubtless to become the servants of whom they knew not. They had complained of these things to the old Inca Upanqui, but without avail, since in such matters he was powerless before Urco who had command of the armies. Therefore they would even welcome the triumph of Huaracha, which meant that Kari would become Inca ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... extract with decided benefit. So soon as the administration of the remedy was stopped the loss of weight ceased, but with the renewal of the remedy the loss of weight again ensued to a certain point, beyond which the extract seemed powerless to act. Ewald also reports good results from this ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... she was thus ardently defending herself she knew well that she had sinned against the supreme social law—the law of "the look of things." It was true that chance had worked against her. But common sense would have rendered chance powerless by giving it no opportunity to be malevolent. She was furious with Rachel Fleckring. That Rachel Fleckring, of all mortal girls, should have exposed herself to so dreadful, so unforgettable a humiliation was mortifying in the very highest degree. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... behavior had cast a shadow upon the party which even Mollie's empty light-hearted chatter was powerless to dispel, and when, shortly after midnight, Sir Lucien drove Rita home to Prince's Gate, they were very silent throughout the journey. Just before the car ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... found I had taken the whole Boer force in flank, and had entirely cut them off from their line of retreat. My guns played on the masses of horsemen, but my few cavalry, dead beat, were {p.151} powerless, and for the second time I longed for a cavalry brigade and horse artillery battery to let me reap the fruits of a hard-fought action." "The loss in both these actions," Methuen says, "was great, and convinces me that if an enemy ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... thinking there is,' admitted the other very solemnly. 'I was so sorry for her, and felt so powerless. She cried a little. All I could do was to entreat her not to behave rashly. I thought her ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... to most beneficient results. For many generations the great scourge of Europe was the smallpox. Often the disease was as violent as the plague (S474), and carried off nearly as many victims. Medical art, seemed powerless to deal with it, and even in years of ordinary health in England about one person out of ten died of this loathsome pestilence. In the early part of George I's reign, Lady Mary Montagu, then traveling to Turkey, wrote that the Turks were in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Pretence and grimace and sordid beggary for votes will some day cease to avail. Have FAITH, and struggle on, against all evil influences and discouragements! FAITH is the Saviour and Redeemer of nations. When Christianity had grown weak, profitless, and powerless, the Arab Restorer and Iconoclast came, like a cleansing hurricane. When the battle of Damascus was about to be fought, the Christian bishop, at the early dawn, in his robes, at the head of his clergy, with the Cross once so triumphant raised in the air, came down to the gates of the city, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... reconcile the degree of punishment inflicted upon the soldiers, the poorly paid defenders of the Empire, with their casual offences. While he rebelled against the brutalities of some officers, he was powerless to prevent them. The sentencing powers conferred by court-martial were at that time beyond belief. A captain and two subalterns could order 999 lashes with a "cat" steeped in brine. It is on record that ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... science? What was the intellectual generation that sprang from each of them? I only repeat what the men of science have themselves pointed out. The man of genius was continued by the English analysts of the eighteenth century, comparatively powerless and obscure followers of the renowned master. The man of intelligence was continued by successors like Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace, the greatest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... passage that, in all relations of life, Christ regards the kingdom of God as the more powerful, victorious, finally overcoming all opposition, and the kingdom of darkness as powerless, falling in ruins ever more and more. Yet, how do most of you have so little confidence in your faith, and wrap it carefully in the cotton of isolation, lest it take cold from any draught of the world; while others are vexed with you, and proclaim that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the fiery chariots that girdled the prophet. Men are blind to the starry truths that shine as silver in the firmament. They are deaf to the Voice which is gone out to the ends of the earth, and yet they have eyes and ears, conscience, intuitions. They possess organs, but these are powerless. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... coward and never shirked duty yet; but frankly I don't much like facing him for this reason. A madman's a madman, and we can't expect a madman to be any too reasonable if we oppose him, however tactfully. I should be powerless if he got off his head, or resented the advice I should have to give him, or went for me—powerless, I mean, to do anything but stop him with a bullet. But if he's got to be stopped that way, I don't want to be the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... purposes. It would exclude almost the whole of war from Alexander's time to Napoleon's. And what guarantee was there that the next war would confirm to the Napoleonic type and accommodate itself to the abstract theory? "This theory," he says, "is still quite powerless against the force of circumstances." And so it proved, for the wars of the middle nineteenth century did in fact revert to ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... "When he comes back, I will ask him what can be done. It will not be easy to hide you, for these negroes chatter like so many parrots; and the news will spread all over the town that some English boys are here, and in that case they will take you away, and my father would be powerless ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... father's property. So we see how little convincing force the stock notion on which the Real Estate Intestacy Bill was based,—the notion that in the nature and fitness of things all a man's children have a right to an equal share in the enjoyment of what he leaves,—really has; and how powerless, therefore, it must of necessity be to persuade and win any one who has habits and interests which disincline him to [216] it. On the other hand, the practical operation proposed relies entirely, if it is to be effectual in altering the present ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... claim for it a special application in dislocations. It has certainly peculiar merits here, as the will is so nearly subjugated by it as to render the patient quite powerless to resist your effort at replacing, and at the same time ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... numbered but one in six of their assailants, yet they are repulsed with a loss of sixty dead, while the Vaudois only lost three. Other attacks were equally unsuccessful, and so La Trinite persuades the Angrognians to a truce by which they are powerless to resist, although he still continues his own plans of devastation, plunder, and confiscation. Those cruelties drive the people of La Torre to caves and rocks, although it is winter. An instance of cruelty may be narrated in the case of a man aged a hundred and three, who was found by the ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... instruments, the cost of which had in the long run to come out of the estate. The result was that undesirable persons were too frequently appointed, whose main object was to extract from the estate as much as possible in the shape of costs of administration. The debtor was practically powerless to prevent this result. If he attempted to do so he sometimes became a target for the exercise of revenge. His discharge, which under liquidation by arrangement was entirely a matter for the creditors, might be refused indefinitely; and so largely ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... American was the real danger. That pale ghost conjured from the grave by Stampa was intangible, powerless, a dreamlike wraith evoked by a madman's fancy. Already the fear engendered myopia of the morning was passing from Bower's eyes. The passage of arms with Millicent had done him good. He saw now that if he meant to win Helen ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... bored its way through the skull of the wolf, who, with a rasping yelp, made a sidelong plunge, as if diving off a bank into the water, and, striking on the side of his head, rolled over on his back, with his legs vaguely kicking at the moon, and as powerless to do harm as a ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... Piero's life. The plot failed, chiefly owing to the coolness and the cunning of the young Lorenzo, Piero's eldest son. Public sympathy was strongly excited against the aggressors. Neroni, Acciaiuoli, and Soderini were exiled. Pitti was allowed to stay, dishonoured, powerless, and penniless, in Florence. Meanwhile, the failure of their foes had only served to strengthen the position of the Medici. The ladder had saved them the trouble of kicking ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... insulated buildings, which seemed to be store-houses, we passed these quickly in single file, pretty wide apart. The interstices were from thirty to fifty yards. In these intervals, we received a tremendous fire of musketry from the ramparts above us. Here we lost some brave men, when powerless to return the salutes we received, as the enemy was covered by his impregnable defences. They were even sightless to us, we could see nothing but the blaze from the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... thought the quiet boy could be made the subject of practical jokes and petty annoyances without much danger of retaliation. Graham would usually remain patient up to a certain point, and then, in dismay and astonishment, the offender would suddenly find himself receiving a punishment which he seemed powerless to resist. Blows would fall like hail, or if the combatants closed in the struggle, the aggressor appeared to find in Graham's slight form sinew and fury only. It seemed as if the lad's spirit broke forth ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... as if they were powerless to move, the girl entered the warm and cheerful room, but at her entrance understanding seemed to give her strength. With a shuddering, shivering, indrawing breath she drew back ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... the absence of research in this direction, and how man, endowed to overcome every physical disability which encompassed him on land, was powerless to live on the wide ocean, although it is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... said: "It was no caprice of the fortunes of war. From the very first cannon-shot our fragile ships were at the mercy of the formidable hostile squadron. They were condemned to fall one after another under the fire of the American batteries, powerless to strike, and were defended only by the valour in the breasts ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... on hearing the young man's voice was almost superhuman. It was something like a mingled cheer and cry of agony. In another moment he sprang forward, and seizing Henry in his arms, pressed him to his breast with a grasp that rendered the youth utterly powerless. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... beloved Anthony!" said Juliet, sinking on her knees beside him, and clasping his fettered hands within her own. "I have loved you long and tenderly. I shall see you no more on earth. If my life could ransom yours, I would give it without a sigh; but will is powerless; our hands are tied; we are indeed the creatures of circumstance. All that now remains for us is to submit—to bow with fortitude to the mysterious ways of Providence. To acknowledge, even in our hearts' deep agony, that whatever is, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Spaniards began to feel very uneasy. An army composed of thousands of Indians was encamped only two miles away; and compared with it, the two hundred men of Pizarro appeared powerless. The situation of the Spaniards, should the Inca decide to oppose ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... heed their presence, And you will not shrink before them, 280 Rise thou up, O Water-Mother, Raise thy blue cap from the billows, And thy soft robe from the waters, From the ooze thy form of beauty, For a powerless hero's rescue, For a weakly man's protection, Lest I should be eaten guiltless, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... temptation thou wilt trample under foot. 'Thou shalt not be afraid for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.' Hidden known temptations will be equally powerless; and in the fold into which all pass by faith in Christ thou shalt be safe. And so, kept safe from each danger and in each moment of temptation, the aggregate and sum of the several deliverances will amount to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... for two days. The vanity for which she did penance whenever her madonna loveliness, consummated by the white robe and veil of her novitiate, tempted her to one of the little mirrors in the pupil's dormitory, was powerless to check the blighting flow. There had been moments when she had argued that her vanity had its rights, for had it not played its part in weaning her from the world?—that wicked world of San Francisco, whose very breath, accompanying her family on their ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... right to be represented in Congress at any and all times, and to participate in the government of the country under all circumstances, admits of neither question nor dispute. If this is indeed true, then is the Government of the United States powerless for its own protection, and flagrant rebellion, carried to the extreme of civil war, is a pastime which any State may play at, not only certain that it can lose nothing, in any event, but may be the gainer by defeat. If rebellion succeeds, it accomplishes its purpose and destroys the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... seized with another fit, lost his speech, and, after struggles the most melancholy for Helen to see, conscious as she was that she could do nothing for him—he expired—his eyes fixed on her face, and his powerless ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the whole corps, some fifteen thousand men. It seemed as though the whole army was being stampeded. We soon had a vast throng of these fugitives dammed up in our front, a terrible menace to the integrity of our own line as well as of all in our rear. We were powerless to do anything should the enemy break through, and were in great danger of being ourselves swept away and disintegrated by this frantic mob. All this time the air was filled with shrieking shells ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... child are both dead," said the old physician, with tears in his eyes. "Both dead. It was a boy. Science was powerless; nature was hostile and the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... nations against three. When Roumania and Italy join the Allies, as is now being diplomatically arranged, Germany will be completely surrounded, with Switzerland, Holland, and Denmark in a measure locked in and powerless to give aid or assistance to the Germans. Indeed, these three smaller countries and Scandinavia are practically locked in now, with the North Sea placed in the war zone, and Italy as well as Denmark and Holland shutting out all contraband goods for ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... "Very well, Tyn-Dall, but I warn you, do not enter the Grove. There is death there, death that even I am powerless to prevent. The Guardians will not harm her, but any stranger ... will not live ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... surrender. He was not afraid to risk being killed in a running fight. He was willing to take that chance. But the thought of imprisonment appalled him. To be shut from the sun and the space of the range—perhaps for life—or to be sentenced to be hanged, powerless to make any kind of a fight, without friends or money . . . He thought of The Spider, of Boca, of Montoya, and of Pop Annersley; of Andy White and Bailey. He wondered if Ed Brevoort had got clear of El Paso. He knew that there ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and the paddles slapped the water furiously for a time, but without producing any effect. The steamer had taken the ground harder than I supposed. She had run her bow upon the gradual slope of the bottom till the wheels were powerless to move her. ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... Millar felt herself powerless. She dared no more interfere to keep back Annie from her calling than a good Roman Catholic mother would forbid her ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... comforting shouts greeted them. The woods were silent, save for the calls of birds and animals, which, friendly though they might be, were powerless to aid the two girls against this traditional enemy of every furred and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... of the Protestant faith against Popery. Very many others were in the same case. Mr Battiscombe did not venture to plead for his sons, for he might himself have been seized and condemned by the unjust Judge, while he was utterly powerless to assist them openly. The health of the Colonel did not allow him to leave home, or, interested as he was in the fate of his young friends, he would have gone to try and help them. Mr Willoughby, however, who was dauntless in a good ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... his wife and one confidential friend. He rarely took much; never so much as to be brutal at home, or unfit for business at the office; but enough to prove to him that he was not his own master. The shame of his bondage he felt keenly, powerless as he felt himself to break the chains. The week after I left home his wife left also for a visit to her father's. She took the children, one a young babe three months old, with her. Mr. P. was to follow her in a fortnight. She never saw him again. One night he went to his ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... vanity is wounded, the confidence which the country will feel in the enormous superiority of its army will be favorable to an explosion of national anger, in the face of which the moderation of the Imperial Government will perhaps be powerless. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... she had been so carefully hedged in by the numberless small barriers of a girl's sphere, so guided and managed for by those about her, that it had been hardly possible for any sore temptation to come near her. But now suddenly cut adrift from her quiet moorings, she found herself powerless to keep out of the rapid current which must plunge her into deep misery and vice. There had not been a doubt in her mind that she was not a real Christian, for she had freely given a sentimental faith to the Christian dogmas propounded to her by persons whom she held to be wiser and better ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... Ferrara; and to keep down the Pope they made use of the barons of Rome, who, being divided into two factions, Orsini and Colonnesi, had always a pretext for disorder, and, standing with arms in their hands under the eyes of the Pontiff, kept the pontificate weak and powerless. And although there might arise sometimes a courageous pope, such as Sixtus, yet neither fortune nor wisdom could rid him of these annoyances. And the short life of a pope is also a cause of weakness; for in the ten years, which is the average ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... thing more, my Leuchtmar. You must accept a memento of this hour, a memento which I prepared even before my departure from The Hague, and which shall be to you a proof of my gratitude. I am poor and powerless, and as I build all my hopes upon the future, so must I do with my presents as well. You must accept from me a gift of my future, friend. I know full well that what you have done for me can not be recompensed, but I would so gladly ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... in the bitter frost. The wolves meanwhile trot about to keep warm; while the stupid cat sits in one spot slowly perishing, and never thinks of running up and down the tree to keep himself alive. The feet grow benumbed at last, powerless to hold on any longer, and the lynx tumbles off into the wolves' jaws; or else, knowing the danger, he leaps for the nearest ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... of excitement. A steady fire of questions and answers passed between the younger and older brother. The wolf was in hand, the horns of a hundred angry cows held the enemy prisoner, and yet the boys were powerless to make the ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... All that they knew of Jesus was that He was the one 'whom Paul preached.' Even the name of Jesus is spoiled and is powerless on the lips of one who repeats it, parrot-like, because he has seen its power when it came flame-like from the fiery lips of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... a body tireless and powerful enough to remain thirty consecutive hours on horseback. It was a body so powerful that criminal neglect and stupid ignorance of the laws of health were powerless ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Dan stood powerless. But for the gate behind him he would have turned and ran; to scramble back over that, his limbs utterly refused. The delay caused him, in spite of his fear, to discern the very obvious fact, that the shadowy figure ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... morning, Laura," she began, after a few moments, "recalled my own early years so vividly, that I could not keep down emotions I had deemed long since powerless. The cause of those emotions it is now, I clearly see, my duty to reveal—that is, to you. For years I have carefully avoided permitting my mind to go back to the past, in vain musings over scenes that bring no pleasant thoughts, no glad feelings. I have, ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... expansion of their State. There is, however, one very material fact to be remembered in judging the policy of Lord Derby. At the time of the convention of 1884 the English population in the Transvaal was a small, scattered, and powerless minority, and as their numbers were far too scanty to make them a danger to the State, there was not much reason to believe that the Transvaal authorities would repudiate their own assurances and subject them to oppressive disabilities. It was not until two years after ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... will of the gods, he brought low the glory of the powerless Swedes, doing their king to death and crushing him with the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the trouble that had sprung up in her eyes. Her laugh, her gay conversation, her rare composure and gentle hauteur were powerless to drive away the haunted, worried gleam in those expressive eyes of blue. Lorry had it on his tongue's end a dozen times during the next day or so after the count's narrative to question her about the condition of affairs as ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... river. In a few moments the men would be coming home, crossing the ice, perhaps to their death instead of to the warm supper awaiting them at their shanty homes. The thought of it all gripped Jacky's young heart with fear, but he was powerless to warn them. He could not take a single step, and he was rapidly becoming paralyzed with cold and pain. Once more the soft nose of the old horse touched his ear. With the nearness of the warm, friendly ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... he "had smote the balls of his own eyes," and the wise baffler of the sphinx, Oedipus, the haughty, the insolent, the illustrious, is a forlorn and despairing outcast. But amid all the horror of the concluding scene, a beautiful and softening light breaks forth. Blind, powerless, excommunicated, Creon, whom Oedipus accused of murder, has now become his judge and his master. The great spirit, crushed beneath its intolerable woes, is humbled to the dust; and the "wisest of mankind" implores but two favours—to be thrust from the land an exile, and once ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plenitude and complexity of the facts of real life. In its purism, in its disdain of terms suited to the occasion, in its avoidance of lively sallies, in the extreme regularity of its developments, the classic style is powerless to fully portray or to record the infinite and varied details of experience. It rejects any description of the outward appearance of reality, the immediate impressions of the eyewitness, the heights and depths of passion, the physiognomy, at once so composite yet absolute personal, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... opinion the South will never consider this a satisfactory adjustment. You say we are protected by the principles of the common law. Who can tell what this will amount to? Assuming the territorial government to be favorable, it could do nothing. You leave it powerless. Suppose a citizen of Virginia emigrates to the territory south of the line with his property. He would have no earthly right except under the laws of Virginia. The power to enforce those laws is a thousand miles away. If we are to make a partition, let it ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... 12 midnight she was labouring much in her breath, coughed a very little cough, and all at once the rapidity of her breath nearly doubled, suddenly her hand fell over powerless, her eyes became fixed, there was some difficult breathing, and with Mrs. Henderson on the one side of the bed, which had been moved when we came from the hills ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... come off unhurt. One of them, named Chiku, acknowledging that he had been terribly frightened, said. "His fear was not the kind which makes a man jump overboard and run away; but that which brings the heart up to the mouth, and renders the man powerless, and no more able to fight ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... catastrophe. They push nearer and nearer to the brink of the abyss. The warning cry of "back" is challenged by the eager shout of "forward!" The older methods of social progress are abandoned as too slow. The older weapons of social defense are thrown aside as too blunt. Parliamentary discussion is powerless. It limps in the wake of the popular movement. The "state", as we knew it, threatens to dissolve into labor unions, conventions, boards of conciliation, and conferences. Society shaken to its base, hurls itself into the industrial suicide of the general strike, refusing ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... That is the gravamen of the charge against you! You who make then weep, make then tremble, puff them with spiritual conceit, or depress them with terrors of damnation just as you please, how comes it that you are powerless all at once in deterring them from wild and bad actions—you, who are all-powerful in inciting them to any thing, since to refrain from violence is easier than to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... him, for the fellow offered barely a show of opposition. His astounded faculties had no more than recognised the call for resistance when he was powerless in Lanyard's hands. Swung bodily away from the wheel, he went over the rail to the forward deck like a bag of sugar. Immediately Lanyard ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... end, however, came to the appalling tragedy which was taking place before their very eyes; for while they still watched, powerless to save, a terrific explosion occurred, followed by a rain of blazing pieces of timber and, gruesome sight! of portions of human bodies which had been whirled aloft, and now came hurtling down on the decks of the flag-ship. The fire had reached ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due," is powerless without specific legislation to enforce it. Now, on what ground would a member of Congress, who is opposed to slavery in the abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to do? Because ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... approached she grew nervous. Unlike Zora, she had not inherited her father's fearlessness and joy of battle. The touch of adventurous spirit which she had received from him had been her undoing, as it had led her into temptation which the gentle, weak character derived from her mother had been powerless to resist. All her life she had been afraid of Zora, subdued by her splendid vitality, humbled before her more generous accomplishment. And now she was to fight for her honor and her child's and at the same time for the tender chivalry ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... head slowly, with an arrogant smile. It then occurred to George that this man differed strangely from all other men—because the sinister spell of the war had been powerless over him alone. All other men bore the war in their faces and in their gestures, but this man ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to carry upstairs. Poor Gouache was hardly recognisable for the smart soldier who had crossed the bridge of Sant' Angelo half an hour earlier. His uniform was all stained with mud, there was blood upon his pale face, and his limbs hung down, powerless and limp. But as the young girl looked at him, consciousness returned, and with it came the sense of acute suffering. He opened his eyes suddenly, as men often do when they revive after being stunned, and a short groan ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... five hundred sailors and marines cleaning their rifles and marking out distances in the capital of a so-called friendly Power; with our pro forma despatches still being despatched while our real messages are frightened; attempting to weather a storm which the Chinese Government is powerless to arrest. The very passers-by are becoming sheep-eyed and are looking ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... or another, when a man begins to ask, "What is the use of it? Why were we born? What good do we do here? Why should we—as the majority of mankind doubtless are—mere animals be laden up with sorrows till at last our poor backs break? Is God powerful or powerless? If powerful, why did He not let us sleep in peace, without setting us here to taste of every pain and mortification, to become acquainted with every grief, and then to perish miserably?" Old questions these, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... me that it deprived my eyes of sight, and my tongue of speech. I had no power to utter a cry, nor, I think, did he give me time to utter one, as he immediately approached me, and taking me in his arms (for, overwhelmed as I was, I was powerless, I say, to help myself), he began to make such professions to me that I know not how falsehood could have had the power of dressing them up to seem so like truth; and the traitor contrived that his tears should vouch for his words, and his sighs for ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... like manner we trace the steps of the misguided and infatuated Richard, treacherous at once and betrayed, from the hour when the news of Bolinbroke's hostile and successful measures reached him in (p. 059) Dublin to the day when he fell powerless into the hands of his enemy, we shall find much to reprehend; much to pity; little, perhaps nothing, which can excite the faintest shadow of respect. When the Earl of Salisbury left Ireland, Richard solemnly promised him that he would ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... maintain her ascendancy for centuries under the emperors, notwithstanding all her astonishing profligacy and anarchy. And, lastly, after her secular ascendancy had been destroyed by the inroads of the northern barbarians, she rose like the phoenix from her ashes, and, though powerless in material force, held mankind in subjection by the chains of the mind, and the consummateness of her policy. Never was any thing so admirably contrived as the Catholic religion, to subdue the souls of men by the power of its worship over the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... had acted on the first three days of his ocean passage from New York. At the same time all the other functions of his body began to operate. A group of Frenchmen passing by burst into hilarious laughter; it was ridiculous and humiliating, but Jimmie was powerless to help it—he wasn't cut out for a soldier, he hadn't agreed to be a soldier, they had had no business sending him up here where vast craters of shell-holes were opening in the ground, and whole trees were being lifted out of the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... from her care, deprive her of their society, and even of the comfort of occasionally seeing them; and he may place them under the tutelage of the ignorant and vicious; while the deeply wronged mother is powerless, according to law, to help either herself or ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... then, being able to excuse yourself—how? By Divine law again (as you understand it). Divine law says that whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed—that is to say, by you: so you can run under cover and hang Tom Smith. But when Divine law does not protect you, you are powerless. At the most you can send him off to take his ten-to-one chance in a battalion, and when you read his name in the returns, come mincing up to God and say: 'So poor old Tom's gone! How the deuce ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... you say that you will return," replied the sheriff tentatively. The sheriff meant what he said and for the moment had forgotten that he was powerless and was not the ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... Confucius the Chou dynasty still filled the throne. But it had long since become effete, and all power had passed into the hands of the great vassals. The condition of China was much like that of Germany in the worst days of the Holy Roman Empire. The emperor was powerless, the various vassal states were independent in all but name, and often at war one with the other. These states again were disintegrated, and their rulers impotent against encroaching feudatories. In Confucius' native state, Lu, ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... cheering. We had no complaint as to business patronage in the State of California, but there was ever present that spectre of oath denial and disfranchisement; the disheartening consciousness that while our existence was tolerated, we were powerless to appeal to law for the protection of life or property when assailed. British Columbia offered and gave protection to both, and equality of political privileges. I cannot describe with what joy we hailed the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... before they were well awake. Men, women, and children fell victims to such ingenuity of cruelty as only savage vengeance could conceive. Children were dashed to pieces before their parents' eyes; aged parents tomahawked before struggling sons and daughters; fathers held powerless that they might witness the tortures wreaked on wives and daughters. Homes which had heard some alarm and were on guard were set on fire, and those who perished in the flames {167} died a merciful death compared to those who fell in the hands of the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... horror, looked on despairingly at this dreadful occurrence, which he was quite powerless to prevent, and to make matters worse his sight failed him, everything became dark, and he felt himself carried along through the air by ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes for the roasting of smugglers and of the cauldron for the boiling of counterfeiters. The diverse forms assumed by thought in the realm of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this powerless and dejected character. All the songs, the melodies of some of which have been collected, were humble and lamentable to the point of evoking tears. The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... complexion, very manly and well bearded like his defunct sire. Notwithstanding his great vigour, in ninety days he had little by little withered, ruined by his commerce with the succubus of the Rue Chaude, according to the statement of the common people; and her maternal authority over the son had been powerless. Finally in his latter days he appeared like a poor dried up worm, such as housekeepers meet with in a corner when they clean out the dwelling-rooms. And always, so long as he had the strength to go, he went ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Punjab are utterly powerless and worthless. The great body of the nation is adverse to all control, and in no degree submissive to the authority of those who are ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... filmy line was sped, For powerless or untrue Each aim appeared, and back recoiled The patient insect, six times foiled, And yet unconquered still; And soon the Bruce, with eager eye, Saw him prepare once more to try His courage, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... woman! Ha, does she not give herself the appearance of not remarking that I constantly have for her a clouded brow and an unfriendly greeting? How! will she not take the pains to see that her empress looks upon her with disfavor? But she shall see and feel that I hate, that I abhor her. Oh, what a powerless creature is yet an empress! I hate this woman, and she has the impudence to think I cannot punish her unless ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Foch struck in 1870 were without weight in helping to avert France's catastrophe. But he was like hundreds of thousands of other young Frenchmen similarly powerless in this: In the anguish he suffered because of what he could not do to save France from humiliation were laid the foundations of all that he has contributed to the ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... I do the apocrypha of the agony column: such crude devices amuse the intelligence without fatiguing it. But this is different. It is clearly a reference to the words in a page of some book. Until I am told which page and which book I am powerless." ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of tears is to have faced and conquered the simple human nature, and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotions. It does not imply any hardness of heart, or any indifference. It does not imply the exhaustion of sorrow, when the suffering soul seems powerless to suffer acutely any longer; it does not mean the deadness of old age, when emotion is becoming dull because the strings which vibrate to it are wearing out. None of these conditions are fit for a disciple, and if any one ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... wild, 'Twixt you and Progress' pale-faced child Fated vendetta rages, And Pity's self stands powerless To help you counter with success The onset of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... "We were powerless to help ourselves. But while we sat there in utter despair, a neighbor rode by and hailed us. He told us that Red Cross committees had started out from Milwaukee and Chicago at first tidings of the fire, with car-loads of supplies, and that if we could go to ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... the wish, on his side, to spare her might be what most worked with him, this very fact of their seeming to have nothing "inward" really to talk about wrapped him up for her in a kind of sweetness that was wanting, as a consecration, even in her yearning for her husband. She was powerless, however, was only more utterly hushed, when the interrupting flash came, when she would have been all ready to say to him, "Yes, this is by every appearance the best time we've had yet; but don't you see, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... sensational campaign the country had ever seen. "The barbed arrows of ridicule had pierced the strong man's armor," one editorial said, "and accomplished something that the heaviest blows of the Opposition had been powerless to achieve." Dr. Clay had defeated George Steadman by a large majority, and the Millford "Mercury" was free to express itself editorially, and did so with ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... laughed, as who should say, "You put me off," then surrendered herself with eagerness to the pleasure of his report. At the moment of his approach, under pretence of talking to an elderly cousin of Maxwell's, she had been lost in such an abstraction of powerless pity for George Tressady—whose fair head, somehow, never escaped her, wherever it moved—that she had hardly been able to bear with her guests or the burden of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for the wearied foot. The better way is hidden; faith hath failed— One stronger far than reason mastered her. It is not reason makes faith hard, but life. The husks of his dead creed, downtrod and dry, Are powerless now as some dishonoured spell, Some aged Pythia in her priestly clothes, Some widow'd witch divining by the dead. Or if he keep one shrine undesecrate And go to it from time to time with tears, What ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... waistcoat. There remained, then, none but old Catherine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense. In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle. These animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations. Alexander, the grandson of Catherine, is as yet an exception. He is able to hold his own. But he is only of the third generation. His race is not yet ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... lady did, when she had heard Federigo's story, and seen the relics of the bird, was to chide him that he had killed so fine a falcon to furnish a woman with a breakfast; after which the magnanimity of her host, which poverty had been and was powerless to impair, elicited no small share of inward commendation. Then, frustrate of her hope of possessing the falcon, and doubting of her son's recovery, she took her leave with the heaviest of hearts, and hied her back to the boy: who, whether for fretting, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... husky whispers, and they were more alarmed than ever at discovering the extent of their own demoralization. The bottle, one of those small-necked, big-bodied quart-bottles that Western topers carry in yellow-cotton handkerchiefs, was passed round. But even the whisky seemed powerless to neutralize their terror, rather increasing the ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... under," was shouted in the voice of some eager friend. Rising up on the water, Morton made a last effort to do as he was bid. He did press the man's head down,—well down below the surface,—but still the hand clung to him, and as he struck out against the water, he was powerless ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... climax of my confusion was reached when, folded in his warm embrace, and giddy with the whirl, a strange, sweet thrill would shake me from head to foot, leaving me weak and almost powerless, and really almost obliged to depend for support upon the arm which encircled me. If my partner failed from ignorance, lack of skill, or innocence, to arouse these, to me, most pleasurable sensations, I did not dance with ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... passed eight days in arrest—eight tedious days, days of powerless anger and painful humiliation. This arrest had been, by the king's express orders, so strict, that no one was allowed to see the prince but Pollnitz, who belonged, as the king said, to the inventory of the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... of Norway was framed in 1814, the Continent was but little acquainted with the pure parliamentarism, with a ruling Council and a powerless King. The Constitution is instead based on the theory of the division of the state power into three organs, and this is plainly stated in the division of the Constitution. The King's veto over legal questions is only suspensive, ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... violently resenting interference. Therefore you can only stand and watch, hoping that he will notice the flames before they are beyond control, and extinguish them. The probability is, however, that he will notice the flames too late. And powerless to avert disaster, you are condemned, therefore, to watch the damage of valuable property. The flames leap higher and higher, and they do not die down till they have burned themselves out. You avert your gaze from the spectacle, and until you are ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... my meaning. I am talking of a man who is full of courage and determination, yet just because he is only one is powerless. A lion might be killed by rats if there ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
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